Learning the Ropes Part 1: Apr 26 - May 6th

Hello Everyone,

Thanks for coming to check this out! I've decided to send out my first update...it doesn't promise entertainment of the rapturing kind, but its what I've experienced so far and I'd like to share. Below there is a quick summary and the details follow:

0 - Fire Count

0 - New blisters from my steel toes (just tenderness so far!)

1 - Live moose I've seen

2 - Days it SNOWED in Cochrane

Overall, I'm pretty impressed with Cochrane and the fire base. The town is larger than I expected, with quite a few stores and the base is also large, very clean and there's a lot of personal storage space. All the people that work there seem pretty chill, and Matt and I have gotten to know some of the newer crew members pretty well. The work itself isn't exactly what I expected, and even though we've done quite a bit of in-house training (videos and such) we haven't done any field training and I'm itching to do some. I'm getting adjusted to the lifestyle here and find myself in the typical cycle of gym, work, cook, relax, sleep repeat. We're still living in our not-so-bad, but super-expensive apartment at the Chimo Motel, but we've been informed we can get a refund if we find a place before our month is up, and we have some good prospects so far. As for the landscape/weather, it is definitely colder up here (temps usually only reach 10-13 degrees), but the trees aren't shorter than usual. The animals are different though - barely any raccoons or skunks and no deer, but lots of caribou and moose. Hopefully I can get some venison and other wild meat up here!

Day 1 - Monday, 8:00am start. We filled out a ton of paperwork to get hired, but I managed to forget all forms of ID in Waterloo. Ah! Luckily my mom had my birth certificate and was able to fax it in...otherwise I couldn't have started training. Then we watched training videos on health and safety and bear safety. Polar bears are the only animals that will hunt humans for food - I had no idea!

4:00pm finish. Matt and I went to our hell hole hotel, scarfed some food and hit the gym for the first time. Terrible gym! No squat rack, very few DBs and a trainer with an attitude. Matt definitely butted heads with her.

Day 2 - Tuesday, 8:00am start. More training videos on WHMIS and grow-ops/meth labs...apparently we come across these in the bush sometimes. Take home message: Kids, meth is bad! And dangerous. Ughhh! We also got sized for our fire-resistant uniforms today. Dark green pants and a bright orange shirt. Pumped to get these in :)

4:00pm finish. Off to the gym again. I've decided to switch from a 3 day work out to a 4 day workout, seeing as I have no dance classes and nowhere to climb now. Matt and I are getting along pretty well so far. Its his first time living with a girl, but he's doing well so far and I think there's a good chance that we can get through the summer without hating eachother at the end.

Day 3 - Wednesday, 10:30am start. Our first day starting at our normal start time (we will work 10:30am-7:00pm every shift from now on). Wednesdays are "common days", which means everyone at the base works. There's over 50 people on crews so the base is pretty packed. Some of us met our crews, but my crew leader - he's from Manitoulin too! - has yet to pass his fitness test, so my crew is up in the air. Today we also got all of our materials for our packs. It's like free shopping: you go to the warehouse and pick up your tent, sleeping bag, first aid kit, mosquito spray, sunscreen, gloves, safety glasses, foot powder, headlamps etc. We also started on our schedules, which meant that I had the next two days off. Matt's crew is on the same schedule as mine, so we will have all the same days off. Yay? Main duty for our days off was to pack our 19 day pack with our personal belongings (socks, underwear, spare boots etc).

Day 4 + 5 - Days off. Thursday I spent exploring the "downtown" core of Cochrane while Matt went golfing. Exciting stuff! But I did check out the bulk food store and was pleasantly surprised. No bulk PB or wasabi peas, but plenty of fruit and nuts and MEAT! I also saw a Farquhars truck, which was really exciting, because that means my local ice cream is available in Cochrane. Yummm!

Friday night we went to a firefighter house (5 guys live in this 3 bdr house!) for a pre-drink. Tons of fun and lots of euchre and "pyramid" games later we went to the local pub "Thibs Tavern". This is a small, crowded place with a large bar, many trophies and a pool table. It was alright, but I preferred the house party.

Day 6 - Saturday, 10:30am start. We weighed our packs and I was way underweight! :) I then set up my tent and waterproofed it to no end...there will be no leaks in my tent! *fingers crossed*

In the evening we went to a party and then hit up a "Stag and Doe" at the curling club. It was a ton of fun, but I had a feeewww too many jello shooters. There's a mysterious bruise on my chin now...

Day 7 - Sunday, 10:30am start. Matt definitely had to wake me up for work...thank god he did, because I would have totally slept in. Slllightly hungover lol. While my crew got sorted, I was placed in a different crew while one of their members was away on a course. I was informed that we would be doing wilderness orientation today, which involved learning the local landscape. Looots of walking, in STEEL TOE BOOTS. I thought I was doing ok, but the next day my heels were definitely tender. I also got training in how to set up a portable propane BBQ. Delicious!

Day 8 + 9 - Mon +Tues. Our crew was on yellow alert in Kapuskasing both days (means you have half an hour to start leaving for a fire; Reds have to leave immediately), so each morning we loaded the truck with all of our equipment (pump, hose, tools etc) and our packs and crew food bag. The 1.5 hour drive took us through a series of small northern towns, like Moonbeam, which is obsessed with aliens. It even has a spaceship as the town mascot! In Kapuskasing, we went to the airport and waited in the MNR locker for a fire call. Unfortunately the weather wasn't very nice, so we didn't get anything, but we did get to practice our hover exits from the helicopter. I had never been on one, so I was pretty excited and slightly nervous to open and close the door on a hovering helicopter while balancing on its skids. At this point I was getting a little frustrated, because as exciting as it was to be waiting for a fire, I still hadn't done any outdoor pump/hose training -while on yellow or red alert we can't do any of this training because you need to be ready to go. This made me feel pretty useless to my crew, as they hadn't had a chance to see what my capabilities are.

I have to be honest that I had expected things to be a little different, with a more structured training program, but I'm starting to realize the unpredictable nature of this job makes structure pretty much impossible. Alex helped me understand that the work culture is probably just different here and that not everyone is a young keener like I am, wanting to learn as much as I could in the shortest time possible. I still sulked all evening. To cheer up Matt and I watched Jerry Seinfeld's stand-up routine. It definitely worked :)

Day 10 - Wednesday. Another "common" day. I'm starting to recognize most people and know about 40% of people's names. This will definitely take awhile as there are 4 Daves, 2 Curtis', 2 Dans etc. The big boss was in today and the regional manager was visiting, so everything needed to be whipped into shape. I spent the morning in the gas house making sure all of the gas cans were properly labeled and tagged, and then while all the crew bosses and leaders were in a FireSmart presentation, some crew members and I tested and serviced three pumps. I'm feeling much more comfortable with these small machines now that I've taken a few apart.

In the evening we went to Erik's camp - he's on Matt's crew. Driving there was super pretty as the fog had rolled in and his camp was pretty awesome as well. Beautiful log cabin with neat landscaping, surrounded by two lakes. The boys shot some golf balls into the calm lake as heat lightening flashed over the trees across the lake. Once the sun set we headed inside and had a pretty chill night.

Day 11 +12 - Days off. On Thursday, Alex left for Germany. He won't be back for six weeks and I'm ridiculously excited for him to go backpacking, but I will definitely miss talking to him all the time. He does have a skype account now (thanks Glen!), so hopefully we'll be able to talk a few times :) I won't be able to help mentioning his Europe antics in here from time to time!

Other than saying bye to Alex, I spent the day relaxing. Matt and I headed to the gym and watched our first movie in the Cochrane movie theater: Iron Man 2. Woo! I thought it was pretty good, but Matt wasn't too impressed. Later on I found out that it wasn't supposed to come out till Friday...guess we saw it a bit early! Today we went to the gym earlier and had a nice long workout. I did my ballet stretches, which I hadn't done in ages and my body feels soo good! Later on we will probably head back to the camp and hopefully go fishing :)

Thanks for reading!